National News

Former beauty queen ordered to pay Donald Trump $5 million

This beauty queen has to deal with an ugly reality: The pageant contestant Sheena Monnin has been ordered by a judge to pay Donald Trump and his Miss USA pageant $5 million in a defamation lawsuit after she claimed the contest was fixed.

After the 2012 Miss USA pageant the former Miss Pennsylvania accused the contest of being rigged. She claimed on Facebook and the “Today” show that another contestant saw a written list of five finalists backstage before winners were officially announced onstage, according to the New York Law Journal.

Monnin quit the contest and wrote on her Facebook page that the pageant was “fraudulent, lacking in morals, inconsistent and in many ways trashy.”

Trump fired back, calling her accusations “false and reckless,”the New York Post reported. “She was angry that she lost,” he added.

Trump sued over the “false charge,” and the case went to an arbitrator, who ruled that Monnin had defamed the pageant, ordering her to pay $5 million. The beauty queen sought to have the judgment overturned. The judge ruled against her.

“Sheena’s problem in this case is that she never produced the smoking gun," Dana Cole, a legal analyst, told ABC News. “And therefore, her case was doomed.”